Pastor Tim Patoka
Stories of the Promise #2 December 8, 2019 The Story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar – Repent! Daniel 4:19-37 1) Repentance Requires a Change of Heart 2) God Promises Blessings to his Repentant Children
Sometimes it’s nice to watch a movie when you just want to relax. There’s all sorts of movies out there depending on what you want. You have predictable yet show-stopping blockbusters like The Avengers franchise. You know who the good and bad guys are. You know that after some close calls and special effects, the good guys will win in the end. You have the other extreme with movies based on real events or documentaries. The characters are complex and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers. You have another category in the middle which feature a twist where the main villain turns into a hero due to a change of heart. Movies like Beauty and the Beast, A Christmas Carol, and perhaps the original Frozen. I find for myself that movies which have this change of heart aspect are especially interesting because they are surprisingly intriguing. As far as I know, no one has made a movie about our story for this morning about Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar. But we do have that change of heart aspect going on with King Nebuchadnezzar. It is that change of heart idea which we’ll be looking at this morning as we focus on our worship service’s theme for this morning of: “Repent!” For repentance requires a change of heart concerning sin. But it is a joyful exercise since God promises blessings to his repentant children. 1) Repentance Requires a Change of Heart When I teach repentance in my Youth Confirmation Class, I define it as having three steps. First, repentance is to genuinely confess your sins. You can’t just say the words. It has to come from the heart. Second, repentance is to trust in God’s promise of forgiveness. More on that later. Third, repentance is to live a life free from the sins we just repented of. If we’re sorry for committing such sins, then why would we choose to go back to them again? If you remove any of those steps, then repentance ceases to be repentance. But if you wanted to summarize it into a single phrase, you could say that repentance is a change of heart concerning sin. Instead of sin being something I enjoy, it is something that saddens my Savior. If I call myself a Christian, how I can persist in doing something that grieves the one who gave his very life for me? If we have a change of heart concerning sin, then these three steps of repentance will naturally happen. We see this play out in our story for this morning about Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar. Now when I say story, I don’t mean it’s fictional. These events are history and happened 1
Pastor Tim Patoka
Stories of the Promise #2 December 8, 2019 exactly as described. Daniel was one of the Jewish exiles who served in the king’s palace in Babylon. God had particularly blessed Daniel to interpret dreams which is what brings him to King Nebuchadnezzar as seen in our verses. As Daniel explained, there was a strong and tall tree which provided food and safety for those around. This tree was King Nebuchadnezzar who was the greatest king in this time and place in history. However, God was going to show Nebuchadnezzar who was actually in charge by cutting him down to size. He was going to have Nebuchadnezzar become temporarily insane and live like a wild animal. Once he had a change of heart by recognizing that it is only because of God that he has any power, then Nebuchadnezzar would continue ruling as king of Babylon. Daniel knows that the only way Nebuchadnezzar can avoid this period of insanity is by repenting, by having a change of heart, as soon as possible. So after interpreting the dream, he tells him, “Therefore, Your Majesty, let my advice be pleasing to you. Break away from your sins with righteousness and from your guilty deeds by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps your prosperity will be extended” (Daniel 4:27). Nebuchadnezzar did have a change of heart – but not as soon as Daniel advised. Twelve months after having this dream, we see King Nebuchadnezzar walking the roof of his palace in Babylon filling himself full of sinful pride and saying, “Isn’t this the great Babylon that I built for a royal residence by my mighty power and my majestic glory” (Daniel 4:30)? And just as Daniel said, so it happened – Nebuchadnezzar became temporarily insane and lived like a wild animal. After the set time was complete, he finally had a change of heart. He recognized that his greatness came entirely from God and so wrote his praises in our closing verses. Daniel is not the only one to plead for people to repent. As we heard from the Gospel of Matthew, John the Baptist likewise called for people to repent so as to prepare for Christ’s coming. We’re in the season of Advent when we prepare for Christ’s coming, with one of them in Bethlehem at Christmas. We too need to hear his call of repentance, to have a change of heart concerning sin. Yet that does not easily come. We are born in sin and have a sinful nature that loves to do one thing – sin all the more! To deny how we are born is not an easy task even though it is a necessary one. We see how this difficulty shows itself in the three steps of repentance. It’s hard to repent when we’re not sorry for the sins we enjoy. Nebuchadnezzar certainly enjoyed seeing all the glory of Babylon from the roof of his palace. He enjoyed puffing himself up and taking credit that was due for God. What sinful things and activities might we enjoy and, as a result, struggle to be sorry about? It’s hard to repent when we’re too ashamed to ask forgiveness from the one we have grieved. If we have a problem with someone, it is far easier to talk about them than to them. When we remember that our sins sadden our Savior, we also have the added factor of shame. We would rather ask for forgiveness from a third party or work it out on our own than to 2
Pastor Tim Patoka
Stories of the Promise #2 December 8, 2019 pile shame on ourselves. It’s hard to repent when those sins we repented of are a part of our life. Sins from our lifestyle or giving in to cravings and weaknesses of the flesh are not easy to stop. Whether we are in ancient Babylon, by the Jordan River, or in Tucson, Arizona, we need to heed the call of repentance, to have a change of heart concerning sin. Because if we don’t, we run the risk of having John the Baptist’s condemning words spoken against us, “You offspring of vipers…produce fruit in keeping with repentance!...Already the ax is ready to strike the root of the trees. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:7-9). To purposefully live in unrepented sin is to purposefully separate ourselves from our God. It’s to say, “I would rather have a heart that delights in sin rather than to have a heart that delights in my Savior.” And if we continue in this path, we will be burnt up with the chaff in unquenchable fire and suffer eternal separation from God. 2) God Promises Blessings to his Repentant Children The only way to avoid this condemnation is to repent, to have a change of heart concerning sin. But that doesn’t mean repentance has to be a chore. Rather it is a joyful exercise where we turn to our Lord and receive his promised blessings. We see this happening with King Nebuchadnezzar when he finally repented. After he regained his sanity, God put Nebuchadnezzar back on the throne and made him more majestic than before. Nebuchadnezzar even had the privilege to pen some of God’s own words in the Bible! Sadly, I can’t promise you that God will reward your repentance with physical blessings as he did with Nebuchadnezzar. God doesn’t promise us riches, fame, or even an easy life. But he does promise us spiritual blessings when we repent. We see the chief spiritual blessing in our Second Lesson from Acts chapter three. As the Apostle Peter told the crowds in Jerusalem after healing a crippled beggar, “repent and return to have your sins wiped out, so that refreshing times may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19-20). If we repent, we will have our sins wiped out; we will return to refreshing times since we will have the forgiveness of our sins. That spiritual blessing of forgiveness is better than any physical blessing. But it is only possible because God has already charged our sins to Jesus. As we prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming this Advent season, we would be wise to review what this Christ was prophesied to do so that we remember why we celebrate his birth so much. He was to come from Eve’s family line, crush Satan’s head, and in so doing free us from Satan’s sinful grasp. He was to love the Lord and his neighbor as himself by keeping every law that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. He was to exemplify Isaiah’s Suffering Servant who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, so that by his wounds we are healed. But more than that is where his life on earth would temporarily end. It was on the cross that Jesus, who never needed to repent, took our sins upon himself and paid the price that our 3
Pastor Tim Patoka
Stories of the Promise #2 December 8, 2019 sins demand – death itself. God can wipe our sins out when we go to him in repentance because they have already been taken care of. No one else needs to suffer for them. Whenever we repent, we joyfully receive this blessing of forgiveness. And there are still more to follow. We have peace with God. Because our sins no longer count against us, there is nothing to incite God’s wrath against us. This peace will continue for all time and as such gives us confidence towards the Last Day. When our Savior comes back to judge the living and the dead with the winnowing shovel that John the Baptist talks about, we can be certain that we will be gathered with the wheat and be safe forever in heaven. That’s all given to us simply whenever we repent, whenever we have a change of heart concerning sin. This repentance is not a one-time action. We need to regularly repent because we regularly sin. Yet repentance is not a chore. It’s a joyful exercise that connects us to the cross because we know that God’s spiritual blessings are attached to it. Jesus gave his life for our forgiveness and he freely gives this forgiveness to every repentant believer. So why wouldn’t we receive this gift when we sadly cause our Savior to grieve? Why wouldn’t we strive to live a life free from those same sins we just said we’re sorry for doing? And as we strive to change our hearts with regular repentance, we will also be preparing ourselves accordingly for Christ’s coming at Christmas. There are a lot of different types of movies out there. But the ones which feature a villain turning into a hero because of a change of heart can especially grab our attention. As we saw with the story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, King Nebuchadnezzar eventually had a change of heart which God used to his glory. Repentance too can be described as a change of heart concerning sin. When we realize that these sins sadden our Savior, we more easily confess them with a genuine heart. We remember God’s promise of forgiveness that he attaches to repentance. And we strive to live a life free from those same sins. Because we regularly sin, we will need to regularly repent. Yet this is not a chore. It is a joyful exercise for when we repent, we receive that which Christ won for us on the cross. It is my prayer for us this morning that we regularly repent whenever we sin so that we may always remain prepared for Christ’s coming. Amen.
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